Frisco Chau, Managing Partner of MassMedia Studios, argues that marketers must work to keep up with the latest digital media trends for true campaign effectiveness Marketing communications has undergone a massive makeover in recent years with the rising popularity of digital media. Although the average person today consumes more than 70 hours of media per week, only a quarter of that total is accessed via the traditional media channel – free-to-air television (Source: IDC, June).

The ‘scattergun’ approach that (surprisingly) is so prevalent today in digital communications may deliver some results but its lack of specific relevance alienates many of the consumers targeted and risks damage brand values. It’s no surprise then, that savvy marketers are now adapting their approach to initiate a more personal dialogue with consumers.

The changing face of digital marketing
Today’s “wired-in” consumer uses a bewildering array of platforms and devices, both fixed and mobile and it is a mass market phenomena. The ‘digital generation’ now encompasses everyone from six to sixty (and beyond). It’s a fundamental change in the nature of media consumption driven by the demand for anytime, anywhere, any device access. Consumers are continuing to watch traditional broadcast television (and even that has gone interactive and multichannel) but they are just as likely to be browsing on Facebook (although possibly less than they did 6-12 months ago), doing any and everything on their i-phone or listening to a podcast.

The huge varieties of digital marketing opportunities do make the environment significantly more complex – more choice means more to think about! Rather than responding to that complexity with a ‘one size fits all’ approach, we should be thinking about it as a market segmentation opportunity. It we take Facebook as an example, we know that a good proportion of its 90 million active users are going to be aged between 18-30. That’s one level of segmentation but we also know that Facebook has thousands of individual networks that bring together people with common interests – another very useful level of segmentation and there are many more. It’s a similar situation in the mobile world where we have the potential to know specific demographics, use patterns, geographic location and potential for interaction.

The ability to apply these insights in an appropriate manner when it comes to the campaign execution is an entirely different matter (and a separate article).

Compared with the one-way, mass communication, used widely in the past, the growth of digital media brings new opportunities for brands to develop a uniquely personal dialogue and interaction with customers and targets (in some cases, with instant feedback). That personal dialogue enables us to deliver brand messages that will be individually relevant – the right message, in the right format, at the right time and on the right platform.

The opportunity is obvious for all to see but in many ways the consumer has moved faster than many in the marketing industry. It isn’t that marketers don’t understand the segmentation opportunities, it is simply that they have yet adopted the tools that allow them gather, manipulate and interrogate the data that is available.

Customer insight – the key to campaign success
In our personal lives, the more we get to know someone, the better positioned we are to give them what they want – the right birthday gift, a phone call at 7.00pm rather than 10.00pm etc. The same can be applied to marketing - the more a brand gets to know its customers and targets, the more they earn the right to communicate with them in a format that they welcome, or at least find acceptable. The market insight we have is a valuable strategic and tactical asset that enables us to improving communications and deliver quantifiable results by maximizing potential from each interaction. It is an approach that ensures we can acquire, develop and retain the right customers. It may seem obvious, but it is something that many companies are struggling to manage and they simply lose out.

So how do marketers get it right and develop the level of insight needed to boost the effectiveness of their campaigns? It’s crucial to develop a single customer view. In addition to a careful initial analysis of the potential outlets for digital campaigns, it’s essential to design the individual elements to encourage some form of engagement and to ensure that the tools are in place to measure that interaction. The core user data may be collected from a large number of sources but it then needs to be collated, evaluated and cross referenced in an intelligent manner. The resulting analysis provides valuable data to tailor the campaign in question and to develop new, more precisely targeted activity.

The approach taken by a well known consumer brand provides a good example of a well executed digital marketing strategy designed to engage consumers across a variety of media channels while capturing valuable target customer data. A flagship brand, much loved by consumers, the campaign was designed to drive a deeper level of engagement and involvement by providing entertainment, creative positive word of mouth and increased brand awareness. In particular, the desire was to appeal to the 16-24 year old demographic.

A media strategy to encourage interaction included the usual offline activity – TV and outdoor advertising – as well as display, search and text-link advertising online. The digital marketing mix incorporated a website, a mobile site, content in the form of an online and mobile game and videos. Appropriate data capture via registration, survey, and send-to-friend and competition mechanics on both web and mobile sites combined with individual (person level) behavioural (interaction) tracking and site analytics underlined a continued commitment to the relationship marketing program. Communication throughout the campaign with the target audience was facilitated through email and SMS/WAP messaging.

Integration with Bebo capitalised on word-of-mouth opportunities through existing social networks, online forums and fan bases while a humorous, entertaining and customised execution on a flash cartoon series (also shown on MTV and serialised on DVD) with a dedicated and cult following served as the viral application.

The most pleasing aspect of this campaign was the seamless integration of the end user journey and experience between the different campaign touch points and creative content. A television commercial, encouraging consumers to continue the experience online, promoted a clear (and obvious) call to action to respond via SMS to download the game. The TV ad attracted significant responses (in the hundreds of thousands). From there, consumers were driven (from the mobile site) to the website.

All the data, from the viral, web and mobile competition, was collected, stored, cross referenced and organised automatically via a multi-platform management system designed specifically for digital marketing campaigns.

The campaign itself was a great success and importantly, allowed the brand to grow their (database) universe of consumers – 75% of participants in the campaign were completely new! Insights collected will be used by the company long term to foster new and ongoing customer relationships through direct marketing activity, digital and traditional.

Despite the successes there are many brands still persevering with the scattergun. Their campaigns either ignore the opportunity to gather data or they fail to properly analyse and organise the data that is gathered so that it can be exploited across the full portfolio of activity. Often it is because the volume of data available is overwhelming but there are now a number of tools on the market that automate the process and make it possible to develop a single customer view.  These tools collate data from digital and traditional sources, allowing marketers to quickly and easily categorise and access information to properly exploit the opportunities available.

The above example demonstrates how a cleverly thought out and managed digital marketing campaign can draw out the data needed to fully tailor future marketing activities to deliver more effective campaigns and provide additional return on investment. Those companies that fail to adopt this approach risk losing the opportunity to reach new audiences – the cross-selling and up-selling opportunities simply won’t be evident. Just as importantly, they risk damaging existing customer relationships and brand perception through inappropriately targeted campaign material.

The other misconception is that doing the “right” thing with respect to a well integrated multi-channel campaign user journey means significantly increasing the marketing spends. Quite the opposite – a well planned campaign using the right tools can effect significant time and cost efficiencies in the campaign implementation process. As the credit crunch continues to affect the economy it places even more pressure over marketers to justify their spending and being able to use different tools to get more value for money from campaigns can only be welcomed.

The impact of personalised communication
Looking back just five years it was almost unimaginable that we would have access to the consumer data that it is now possible to gather. Today we really can know our customers and targets and develop one to one relationships. Long term marketing data analysis can provide a surprisingly intimate view. For example we may know that ‘John Smith’ is happy to receive and interact with us via email but balks at any company marketing to him through his mobile phone. We may also know that between 7pm to 9pm he’s watching television and later he likely to browse the web where he often downloads his favourite US import TV shows, checks his Facebook page, reads his favourite blogs and checks his email.

When we know how and when he consumes his media we can choose a bespoke marketing communications plan that takes account of his preferences. In doing so we have helped to give him a positive experience which dramatically increases the chances of developing an ongoing commercial relationship.

All the tools are now available that can make it happen and there is no longer any excuse for continuing to waste time and resources on unsophisticated blanket campaigns. More often than not the devices our targets now use to access media is now personal, there’s no reason why marketing campaigns can’t be just as personal. The market is getting more complex and segmented but we really have only one choice. Embrace it with vigour or be left behind.

 

Frisco Chau
Managing Partner of MassMedia Studios